Journalists needed in ‘online world’ more than before, the participants of the World Media Summit said

July 06, 2012, 17:53 UTC+3Chief editor of the radio station Ekho Moskvy believes that though “the monopoly on information is disappearing,” the role of journalist remains high

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MOSCOW, July 6 (Itar-Tass) — The journalists are needed in the ‘online world’ more than before, the participants of the World Media Summit under the motto “World Media: Challenges of the Twenty-First Century” said here on Friday.

“Everything that can be digital, will be digital,” Director General of the Finnish Broadcasting Corporation Lauri Kivinen said at a meeting titled “Information of the future: main tendencies in the transformation of traditional media”. Meanwhile, he noted that for the consumer the attractiveness of the content will become a decisive factor.

“I believe firmly that the journalists are needed and even more than before,” the head of the Finnish Broadcasting Corporation went on to say. “In a broad ocean of information someone should achieve to categorize, arrange and present what is suitable, interesting and necessary. If you are in the middle of the ocean of various reports and do not know how to make a choice from them, this is like being at the restaurant without the menu. We need journalists, integrators, those who will present to us what is interesting and has some sense for us,” Kivinen pointed out.

Director General of the Azerbaijani news agency AzerTAc Aslan Aslanov noted the importance of the content. “The Internet actually opened up for each media, even the smallest one, an opportunity to address to any audience on the global scale. The ability to create the original content plays a major role in this issue,” Aslanov noted. The same factor give an opportunity to the news agencies to turn from national news agencies to the channel of information on the regional scale – European, Asian and other information channels.

For his part, chief editor of the radio station Ekho Moskvy Alexei Venediktov recalled that the journalists learnt about a horrible terrorist act at the airport Domodedovo from the social networks. “People, who turned up there accidentally wrote about it in the Twitter blogs like about a blast in the Moscow metro. Each person can make public the information, including his own information,” he noted.

However, Venediktov believes that though “the monopoly on information is disappearing,” the role of journalist remains high. “A person can write that the house fell down, but he is not responsible for this information, and we are responsible with our reputation, our business. The participants of the social networks are not a threat, but a challenge,” Venediktov remarked.

The ITAR-TASS news agency organized the World Media Summit under the motto “World Media: Challenges of the Twenty-First Century” in Moscow. The summit brought together an unprecedented number of over 300 top managers, which represent 213 media outlets from 103 countries.